


The Blue Macaron Incident

by robotboy



Series: Rogue Street Stories [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ficlet, Gen, Human Disaster Din Djarin, Paranormal Investigators, Pre-Slash, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: What happened to Din Djarin on the way to Rogue Street.
Series: Rogue Street Stories [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009476
Comments: 19
Kudos: 25





	The Blue Macaron Incident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows/gifts).



Din Djarin hung up the phone and punched in the address.

‘Nottinghamshire…’ he traced his moustache with his thumb. ‘You felt something weird up north, right?’

The demon in the back seat wiggled his ears. Din chewed the inside of his lip, and set his phone in its cradle. The crisp voice of the map app told him it was an hour’s drive. He pulled onto the motorway, scowling at the swirl of thunderclouds building up ahead.

A ghost, he could deal with: the rack of spirit traps in the trunk attested to that. But the client mentioned a sword with a black blade. It was unlikely to be _the_ sword, after eight hundred years lost. But not impossible—especially not with the kind of psychic interference radiating from the area. The client’s story matched up with legends of a blade that could cut between this world and the Yonder. He’d traced rumours of it across the Atlantic, and now a phone call out of the blue? The whole thing reeked of destiny. He glanced at the rearview mirror, and Grogu gave him the same innocent blink he always did.

By the time he was a street away, the thunder was near-constant and the demon was grizzling.

‘We’ll get you something to eat,’ Din promised.

He spotted a café, and pulled up outside it. The gearbox shrieked through every excruciating stage of parallel parking. When he killed the engine, it made a sound suspiciously like it planned on staying dead.

‘Hey,’ he muttered, twisting in his seat to unbuckle Grogu’s harness. ‘If this works out, we might find you a way home.’

Grogu’s wrinkly little brow wrinkled further.

.

ˈ̸͓̻̣͇̓͐̌̿͒̐̕͞ͅb̶̢̘̪̝̘̻̩͑̾͌̆͆͜͡ɑ̡̼̪͎̻͓̃̓́̑̓͗̆͡ː̨̖̣͔̻͉̘͈̘̓̉̎́͑͛͢ṫ̴͚͙͓̣̰̺̉͛̏̔̓͢u̷̧̢̙̤̥͙̣̇̑̀̀͛͜ː̸̧̡͙̗͇̮͙̥̈́̅̅͛̕?̢͙͙̩͈̏̉̃̀͒̎̃̍͆̔

Din winced, pulling his thumb over his sleeve to catch the blood before it trickled from his nostril.

‘That’s right,’ he nodded like he understood, swallowing down the coppery tang. ‘You wanna come in? We gotta get you rugged up.’

Grogu wiggled his hands, and Din carefully guided them into mittens. The blessing of autumn weather was that he could stuff Grogu’s ears in a toque and haul him around in a baby carrier like the little beast was always demanding. The curse was that his sunglasses were becoming even more absurd than it had been in English summer. Din suspected Grogu had begun casting a mild glamour over them both, since nobody was cooing over the baby or giving him strange looks. Maybe the two factors cancelled each other out. The café door jingled when he opened it.

‘What can I getcha?’ the barista beamed at him. Din scanned the chalkboard menu and got his wallet out.

‘Caramel frap and a babyccino to go,’ he said.

There was a tugging at his chest, and the soft sound of a mitten batting against glass.

‘That one?’ he murmured, and the demon babbled. To the barista, Din said: ‘And one of the blue macarons, please.’

‘Sure thing,’ the barista’s bright blue eyes flickered for a moment on Grogu. ‘Cute kid.’

Din resisted the urge to check that no green skin was visible. The barista was being polite, and he had the sincerity to pull it off. ‘Thanks.’

Din paid up, and let the barista get to work. Grogu wriggled, so Din held out a finger and let him grip it in his mittened hand.

The door jingled again, and a man walked in.

‘Three lattes, a cold brew, and a soy chai?’ the barista guessed.

‘Thanks, Luke,’ the man reached over the counter and grabbed a cardboard tray for himself. He perched on a stool by the window to wait. Din tilted his glasses: from the right angle, there was a faded mark of the Yonder on the man. Did he know?

‘Babyccino, and your macaron, sir!’ the barista—Luke, apparently—handed them over. ‘Caramel frap will be another minute.’

‘Hey,’ the other customer turned in his seat, looking Din up and down. Din felt himself flush: the man was handsome, with long eyelashes and sharp cheekbones. ‘That your Honda Civic outside?’

Din swallowed. ‘Uh, yeah.’

The man nodded, and Din tried to look cooler than a guy with sunglasses indoors, a backpack full of green poltergeist, a tiny cup of frothy milk, an unnaturally-dyed cookie, and a caramel frap on the way to really complete this terrible picture. His nose promptly started bleeding again.

The man gave him a crooked smile. ‘The bumper bar just fell off.’


End file.
